In previous articles I shared how to build vCAC 6.2 LAB, we created domain controller and DNS services on DC01.contoso.com, vCenter Server on VC01.contoso.com, 3 ESXi hosts on ESX01/02/03.contoso.com, vCAC server on vCAC.contoso.com, IaaS server of vCAC on IaaS.contoso.com and FreeNAS server on FreeNAS.contoso.com.

FreeNAS Installation

I need FreeNAS provides shared NFS storage for ESXi hosts to enable advanced features such as HA or vMotion. I gave 1GB RAM, 4 vCPU and 2GB local disk to FreeNAS virtual machine. DNS name is FreeNAS.contoso.com.

Recently VMware released VMware vRealize Automation Center 6.2 (vCAC). I guess there will be a newer version along with vSphere 6.0. Be an ITPro you have to keep learning new stuff! I built a lab environment on my laptop for learning. I’m going to share my implementation experience below, it spent me dozen hours plus lot of documents reading. Initially I felt it’s to complicate to deploy (That’s looks like a tradition of VMware products). But eventually I thought it’s not easy to provide a unified self-service end user interface in a multi-vendors infrastructure. Even OpenStack is not easy!

You are using HP ProLiant BL460c G7 or Gen8, ESXi version is 5.5, NIC is Emulex chipset. You are using driver version 10.x.x.x. You may experience the host randomly lost connectivity on vCenter Server, host status show “No responding”. You cannot ping any virtual machine hosted on the blade. High pause frame is observed on HP virtual connect model down links after problem occurred. And you see similar error in vmkernel logs:

It’s easy to find a solution for this particular problem. VMware has a KB for this error. Somehow it’s not my case. I don’t know what’s the exactly root cause but you can try vMotion the virtual machine to other host and give a try.